Services to Indigenous communities still fall short

Last week saw the release of the ABS Indigenous Housing and 
Infrastructure Needs Report. Although the report found that housing, 
drinking water and sewerage infrastructure in remote Indigenous communities 
has improved since the last survey in 1999, there are still alarming 
inadequacies.

The most startling statistics are in the area of distance education where 
it was found that students in nearly seven in 10 of Australia's most remote 
Indigenous communities are 100 kilometres or more from a high school 
offering classes up to year 12.

More than 500 of the 1216 communities with a total population of more than 
40,000 are 250 kilometres or more from the nearest school providing the 
full six years of secondary education.

Health care access is almost as difficult for remote communities, with 
almost seven in 10 communities living 100 kilometres or more from the 
nearest hospital. Around half of these have no access to medical emergency 
air services.

Almost three-quarters of the communities surveyed have a continual 
population of more than 50. More than half are in the Northern Territory, 
and almost one-quarter in Western Australia, although the report did survey 
60 communities in NSW.

The report paints a picture of deprivation for many residents of these 
communities, with small improvements over the past two years.

These included a reduction in the proportion of people living in temporary 
dwellings, an increase in the proportion of permanent dwellings connected 
to water and sewerage systems and a reduction in sewerage system overflows 
and leakages.

Flooding, draining and cuts to road access are still the big problems for 
remote communities. Two per cent had no organised water supply and six per 
cent had some permanent dwellings not connected to water.

Eighty of these communities had no electricity supply at all with only six 
per cent overall of communities having electricity connected.

Storms, equipment breakdown and planned outages for maintenance caused one 
in five of the communities to suffer interruptions to electricity supply of 
up to 20 times during the last year.

More than 90 communities had no organised sewerage system with pit toilets 
common in the majority of communities. Twenty-four communities out of 50 
had no organised rubbish disposal systems in place.

Only 12 of the communities received radio or television broadcasts. As for 
public phones almost three in 10 had no phone at all. Most of the 230 
communities surveyed had just one phone.

In responding to the report, Immigration, Multicultural Indigenous Affairs 
Minister Phillip Ruddock said, "that these signs point to a continuing 
pattern of improvement. This is reconciliation at work."

He later goes on to say that the $75 million Indigenous welfare spending 
provided in last years budget will increase the amount of progress in these 
statistics.

Welfare! This shouldn't be classed as welfare spending Mr Ruddock. Since 
when has any Government classified education, health, water, and sewerage 
and electricity services to the major cities as "welfare"? People in the 
major cities including yourself, Mr Ruddock, would class these services as 
a necessity and usually take them for granted. Its time our indigenous 
communities had the same right.